NYC is the Most Walkable City in the United States

Since most of Inhabitat’s NYC-based writers live a car-free life, we’d be the first to tell you that the Big Apple is extremely walkable, and as it turns out, there is copious data to back-up that claim! The Walk Score has just released its annual report measuring the walkability of cities throughout the world and New York City topped the list for large U.S. cities, scoring 85.3 out of 100. Walk Score examines the distance between an address and a diverse set of amenities; the closer the distance, the higher the score. Can you guess which NYC neighborhood is the most walkable of them all?

If you guessed Little Italy, pat yourself on the back. The Lower Manhattan neighborhood scored a perfect 100 points, along with SoHo, the Flatiron District, and Greenwich Village. “The ‘Street Smart’ Walk Score algorithm is based on walking distances from an address to a diverse set of nearby amenities,” explains Walk Score’s website. “Certain categories are weighted more heavily than others to reflect destinations associated with more walking trips. In addition, road connectivity metrics such as intersection density and average block length are factored into the score.”

For a more detailed explanation, you can read the Walk Score Methodology paper. The image above is a heat-map created by Walk Source, with the most walkable neighborhoods pictured in green and the least walkable shown in red. You can see all of the rankings for NYC neighborhoods here.

San Francisco came in at a close second, with a score of 84.9, and Boston, Chicago, and Philadelphia placed third, fourth, and fifth, respectively. You can see all the rankings here. How did your city or neighborhood fare? Let us know in the comments below!